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Thursday, July 16, 2015

We received the National Association of Science Writers Idea Grant to hold a visual storytelling workshop at Manship School of Mass Communication in April (2015). The workshop is called “Telling Stories and Using Visuals for Coastal Environmental Communication” and invited experts from landscape architecture, digital communication, photography, and data visualization. Below is my talk on "Applying Visual Basics to Coastal Environmental Communication" in which I am covering how to develop digital storytelling skills through working with images, graphics, storyboarding, and movie making. To watch the rest of the videos please visit our website Show Me the Coast.

A New Way of Thinking Science: Video Games

A new computer game, Foldit, recently helped scientists unravel the
structure of an AIDS-related enzyme, helping scientists get closer to a
possible cure (CNN, 2011). Unlocking the structure of the enzyme was a quest
going for a decade in the scientific community until Foldit finally put a stop
to it. The game
may help find cures for other protein-related diseases as well such as cancer
and Alzheimers by helping scientists understand the shape and function of proteins.

Proteins,
composed of any combination of 20 amino acids, are key components to cell functions. DNA in the cell determines the
type and sequence of the protein, which carries out the vital functions in each
cell such as muscle movement, digestion, and defense against
infections. Creating and joining amino
acids, however, are not enough. To
carry out their task, proteins must fold into a complex three-dimensional
structure (Nature.com).
And, this is pretty much what the video game builds on. Foldit, as
the name suggests, is a protein-folding game. After a 20-minute
instruction session in the beginning of the game, each player can become a
Foldit scientist and start wiggling, pulling and stretching proteins in 3D to
give them meanings and functions. As the
first law of thermodynamics suggests, energy
can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.
The same goes for protein folding. In a process that requires energy, Foldit
players get awarded when they make proteins that use the least amount of
energy. And, this is how, in only three weeks, Foldit players modeled the
structure of the retroviral protease and contributed to the design of antiretroviral
drug development to cure AIDS.

What does this development mean for science
communication?

First of all, it confirms that the field of
journalism and communication need to recruit more scientists in the digital
media era. In my previous blog on Social Media Week, I agreed with Dan Gillmor,
the author of Mediactive, that we
need more computer science majors in the field. In today’s evolving digital
environment, we are seeing more effective communication tools that are increasingly
being designed by computer scientists. Video-game examples support the view
that we need to keep encouraging more communicators to work with scientists and
vice versa.

Second, it illustrates that videogames are encouraging
a new way of thinking. By playing video games, we can now think more
productively not just about science, but also about policy, art, and education
as Ian Bogost (the author of How to do things with videogames) suggests. In
science, videogames do something that textbooks cannot always accomplish, and
that is teaching the scientific method. Instead of memorizing science, we now
get to practice the scientific method by asking questions and seeking answers. The new way of thinking applies to
policy issues as well. In Fate of the
World, players jump through the scientific, political, and economic
hoops to mitigate the impacts of global warming. Check out the YouTube trailer
for Fate of the World!

Third, digital era is not a threat to journalism
unlike those who argue that the web will kill the newspaper. If anything, it
increases the democratization process by incorporating everyone’s input. No
matter how sophisticated technology might be, the human brain is still the driving
mechanism for computers. Videogames, in that sense, simply provide the platform
where humans’ puzzle solving abilities can find answers to unknown scientific problems.
Isn’t this what journalism is about in the end: asking questions and investigating
answers?

Monday, July 13, 2015

Our research objective is to provide insights into the conditions under which residents and local officials of south Louisiana communities are more likely to implement mitigation and adaptation measures in response to coastal hazards.

Our project develops interdisciplinary knowledge of best practices in coastal environmental communication, by combining research and expertise across environmental psychology, coastal sustainability, community resilience, mass communication and public relations. Results will help informing future efforts in strategic environmental communications in Louisiana, by helping communicators better inform policy-makers and engage community members in policies and local efforts to increase resilience and adapt to a changing coastal environment. Research Brief.

Wired magazine’s most recent issue featured a piece
this month on the country’s biggest spy center that is currently under construction.
The spy center, located in a valley in Utah, will be watching all sorts of
communication including “complete contents of private
emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal
data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and
other digital “pocket litter(Wired 04/ 2012).”
The $2 billion facility is being built by the National Security Center,
which, according to Wired, became the largest and most intrusive intelligence
agency ever. And, it is not just governments, but also any average citizen with
computer access will be under surveillance. A senior intelligence official says

“Everybody with communication is a
target (Wired 04/ 2012).”

And, Wired, on the same issue, warns its
readers: “Watch what you say”

Going back to the article, Social Networking in the Surveillance Society, the author suggests
that as citizens are also subject to, what he calls, “economic surveillance.” In a typical business model, corporations that
own social networking sites, provide free access to users. Over time, as
networking sites accumulate information on personal data and user behavior,
data is eventually sold to advertising clients (Fuchs, 2010). In the same study,
students say that better public information and discussion on privacy issues would improve
their understanding of the surveillance society. Even though this sounds like a
good idea, protest and consumer groups took similar actions in the past,
but they rarely accomplished anything solid. Before the “news feed” function, users would only receive very general notifications from Facebook about their friends' updates. For instance, if friend X
updated his “quotes” on his profile, Facebook would tell you to go to that friend's profile for details about the update.When “news feed” was launched, many users protested, as they perceived constant feed of detailed updates as a threat to privacy. A number of protest groups
were created on Facebook at the time with titles such as “Facebook takes
stalking a whole new level.” Well, over the following months, all those efforts
only led to more invasive features such as the new “Timeline” or “Ticker,” which
updates stories in real-time on the right side of the screen. My overall
argument is that solely vocalizing the problem does not solve the problem. Protest
groups and consumer groups need to take a more effective action, if they want
to make a difference. They should partner with computer scientists or with
people with related technical expertise. If they want to put up a good fight,
they need to speak the same language as Apple, Facebook, Twitter or Amazon
speak, and that is the language of computer science.

I agree with the articles that support the notion that people
care about their privacy more than some might assume. However, it should not be
measured by the number of people who read privacy agreements. One problem with privacy statements is that they are hard to understand! To me they could as well be in French,
a language that scares me even from a distance. Several times I
attempted to read such privacy terms, but the result was failure. The second
problem is that, corporations make you feel entitled to “agree.” For example iTunes,
if you do not agree, it will not give you access. You can't pick which
statements of the term you would like to agree. It is an all-or-nothing deal. So, why bother reading, if you have to agree
in the end anyways?

Visual message framing: The difference between ‘here’ and ‘there’ in global climate change dialoguesAbstract:This study examined the effects of visual message framing (local versus distant) on behavioral intentions as it relates to individual voluntary actions and climate change policy preferences. In doing so, I made a distinction between national mitigation policies and local mitigation policies as the latter has not received much attention in climate change literature. Results of this study suggested that while voluntary actions were influenced by particular risk perceptions, policy preferences were product of a more general risk assessment. Factual information free from any specific framing produced the most effective cognitive model, which served as a guide for policy judgment. Finally, place attachment appeared to increase climate change engagement by influencing information processing through self-regulation of motivation.